Sales jobs are some of the few opportunities that remain in abundance in the current economy. We looked at job applicant data for the past 30 days to see what types of candidates were applying to sales jobs and here is what we found.
As expected, business-related majors account for the largest chunk of applicants to sales jobs, which include sales, business development, and account executive roles. Next in line are Humanities and Liberal Arts majors, followed by IT and Computer Science-related majors. Computer Science majors mainly applied to part-time sales and retail jobs and also to pre-sales sales engineering opportunities.
(Sample size: 385 applicants to sales jobs in the past 30 days)
When we looked at the specific majors within the above major areas, we found Economics majors (which fall within the Business major area) accounted for 15% of applicants, followed by Business Administration majors accounting for another 8%. Tied with Business Administration majors were Computer Science majors, also at 8%. There were five majors accounting for 5% or more of applicants, with the remaining 57% of applicants coming from 33 different majors (listed below).
All majors applying to sales-related jobs on AfterCollege in the past 30 days:
Economics 15%
Computer Science 8%
Business Administration 8%
Finance 7%
Accounting 5%
Mathematics 4%
Statistics 4%
Information Technology/MIS 3%
Art 3%
Sociology 3%
International Business 3%
Psychology 3%
Business Management 3%
International Relations 3%
Electrical Engineering 2%
Chemical Engineering 2%
Marketing 2%
Advertising 1%
Non Profit or Human Services 1%
Electrical & Computer Engineering 1%
Graphic Design/Multimedia 1%
MBA 1%
Management 1%
Industrial Engineering 1%
History 1%
Management Science & Engineering 1%
Healthcare 1%
Nursing 1%
Physical Therapy 1%
Civil Engineering 1%
Communication 1%
Funeral Service 1%
Political Science 1%
Chemistry 1%
Health Physics 1%
Law 1%
Education 1%
Criminal Justice 1%
Architecture 1%
So next time you’re looking for candidates to fill your entry-level sales jobs, look at the obvious candidates in business-related majors such as economics and finance, but don’t discount engineers and high tech candidates. For sales jobs, it’s all about having a specialty or expertise, helping clients solve their problems, and showing them the value of one’s solution.
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